Anti-terror agency points to N.C. case as example of success

By BRIAN FRESKOS - Wilmington StarNews

Published: Sunday, March 3, 2013 at 08:00 AM.

This article contains material from the Associated Press.

Fusion spending

Fusion centers have come under fire for how they spend Department of Homeland Security grant money. The StarNews of Wilmington reviewed budget records provided by the Information Sharing and AnalysisCenter in Raleigh. The records offer some indication of how North Carolina's biggest fusion centers spent federal dollars.

From its opening in fiscal year 2006 to September 2012, ISAAC spent $3.1 million in federal grant money, much of it on training, startup costs and supplies, including:

When authorities in 2009 closed in on a North Carolina-based terrorist group bent on waging jihad, news of the arrests made national headlines. The group, led by an American citizen who lived an unassuming life as a drywall contractor, underscored the reality that Islamic extremism is "not confined to the remote regions of some far away land but can grow and fester right here at home," as one prosecutor put it.

But buried in the torrent of news articles covering the case was only passing mention of a state agency officials call instrumental to the investigation, an agency that has collected intelligence on North Carolinians for years though few outside of law enforcement have ever heard about it.

N.C. ISAAC, short for the Information Sharing and Analysis Center, is one of more than 70 so-called fusion centers set up around the country as part of a controversial federal initiative led by the Department of Homeland Security to avert the communication breakdowns that lead to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

The centers, at least one of which is located in nearly every state, have raised fears of government surveillance, drawing fierce criticism from civil liberties advocates concerned about exploiting security concerns to bring the country closer to an Orwellian state.

Fusion centers form a sprawling security colossus made up of what one former law enforcement official called mini-spy agencies, places where analysts pore over intel about gangs, thieves, terrorists and any other criminal variety, fusing pieces into pictures that authorities can act on.

FUSING IN NORTH CAROLINA

The only other center in the state besides ISAAC is the much smaller EasternRegionalInformationCenter, or ERIC, housed in the New Bern Police Department. The facility is slated to close later this year because the federal grants that have been its sole source of funding dried up.

ERIC partnered with numerous agencies across Eastern North Carolina.

Officials in Charlotte toyed with the idea of setting up a fusion center to cover the state’s western region, but the notion never gained steam, according to Judith Emken, senior assistant city attorney for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department.

Though it never existed, the N.C. Department of Public Safety lists the Charlotte Regional Information and AnalysisCenter, or CRIAC, on its website, and ERIC listed ties to CRIAC in a federal grant proposal.

Officials at the Wilmington Police Department said they deal with fusion centers in regard to crime trends and officer safety issues, such as when someone has threatened law enforcement. One recalled ERIC connecting a bank robbery spree that stretched from Wilmington to New Bern, a link that enabled police to catch the crook. But many say bigger departments that employ in-house analysts like Wilmington are less likely to farm out the work to fusion centers, limiting the centers’ involvement with local criminal investigations.

TAKING DOWN A TERRORIST

ISAAC, the biggest fusion center in North Carolina, is a nondescript set of rooms on the ground floor of the TerrySanfordFederalBuilding and Courthouse in Raleigh. A handful of analysts work behind computers in cubicles, under the glow of fluorescent lights. Across the hall is an investigations unit with officers from a smattering of state and local departments, including Alcohol Law Enforcement and the State Highway Patrol.

Tips stream in throughout the day from public and private sources. The information is compiled, analyzed and, if needed, disseminated to law enforcement via bulletins and emails, officials said.

Information developed through ISAAC’s community outreach program, an effort to increase public awareness of the center’s mission, put investigators on a path toward a group of homegrown extremists plotting in a rural area south of Raleigh.

Daniel Patrick Boyd, an American who had trained in militant camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan between 1989 and 1992, led the group. Also known as Saifullah, Boyd’s aim was to recruit others willing to die as martyrs.

The group, which included two of Boyd’s sons, provided money, transportation and men to help terrorists overseas, attempted to engage in jihad and amassed an arsenal of rifles and pistols before state and federal investigators dismantled the operation.

Seven members of the group were arrested and sentenced to prison. Boyd is serving 18 years.

During a recent interview with ISAAC officials, they pointed to Boyd as an agency success story.

"Throughout the United States, there’s literally been hundreds of attempts to mount terrorist type attacks that have been disrupted and dealt with ahead of time and fusion centers have been a player in many of those cases," said B.W. Collier, ISAAC’s special agent in charge.

COMING UNDER FIRE

Federal lawmakers criticized fusion centers last year because they were unconvinced that the federal government’s investment of as much as $1.4 billion in the initiative had yielded tangible benefits. Critics contend fusion centers exaggerate purported successes and that much of the intelligence they purport to synthesize can easily, and perhaps more efficiently, be done without them.

A blistering 141-page reported released in October by a Senate subcommittee concluded the centers did little to bolster national counterterrorism efforts and sometimes endangered civil liberties and privacy protections.

"The Subcommittee investigation found that the fusion centers often produced irrelevant, useless or inappropriate intelligence reporting to DHS (Department of Homeland Security), and many produced no intelligence reporting whatsoever," the report reads.

Concerns about trampling on constitutionally protected freedoms stayed despite fusion centers’ adoption of privacy policies. One reason for this is that fusion centers encourage the reporting of "suspicious activity," which critics point out can be something as innocuous as someone taking photographs and has actually resulted in photographers being arrested and harassed.

Fusion centers examine suspicious activity reports, known in security parlance as SARs, for credibility and relevance, then forward them to a national repository, where they can be cross linked.

Michael German, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union and a former FBI agent, said in a telephone interview that the fusion center and SAR initiatives led to an expansion in the amount of information being collected about Americans, who has access to it and who it is being shared with.

"Our founders were very wise in the system they established, which requires the government to have an actual basis to believe you’re doing something wrong before we start collecting information about you," he said. "We have lowered that standard. That doesn’t help. It hinders law enforcement and makes them go on wild goose chases."

FIGHTING BACK

Such antipathy aside, fusion centers enjoy vocal supporters, with some waging an offensive to beat back calls for the centers’ reduction or elimination. Ronald Brooks, director of a fusion center in Northern California, declared before a Senate committee in 2011 that fusion centers "add tremendous value to the homeland security enterprise."

The law enforcement community strenuously objected to the derisive subcommittee report, saying it "displays a fundamental disconnect and severe misunderstanding of the federal government’s role in supporting state and locally owned and operated fusion centers," according to a statement released by the National Fusion Center Association.

Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat from Louisiana and chair of the homeland security appropriations subcommittee, said she "cannot disagree more" with the subcommittee’s conclusion, and argued that fusion centers played a pivotal role in numerous criminal investigations, including stopping a terrorist from blowing up a New York subway.

This article contains material from the Associated Press.

Fusion spending

Fusion centers have come under fire for how they spend Department of Homeland Security grant money. The StarNews of Wilmington reviewed budget records provided by the Information Sharing and AnalysisCenter in Raleigh. The records offer some indication of how North Carolina's biggest fusion centers spent federal dollars.

From its opening in fiscal year 2006 to September 2012, ISAAC spent $3.1 million in federal grant money, much of it on training, startup costs and supplies, including: